Stitching photos together

Hi,

 

I am trying to attach two photos side by side. I am NOT trying to create a

panoramic picture, I just need to know how to attach or stitch ANY two or more

pictures together and what software ( hopefully free ) to use. I apperciate

any help.

This is easy to do with any version of Photoshop and probably most image editors. However, if the images are the same size you could use the panorama feature in Irfanview (freeware). This joins together two or more images side-by-side in either a horfizontal row or vertical column.

Rather generically speaking (presuming you're using pretty much any normal image editing package from Adobe, or Corel, etc):

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1) Open the first image.

<br>2) Open the second image. Note the size (in pixels).

<br>3) On the first image, increase the "paper"/"canvas" size by the number of pixels needed, adding the extra space to the left or right, as appropriate. Note that this is NOT the same as resizing/resampling the image... you're increasing the working space AROUND the image (well, off to one side of it, anyway).

<br>4) Paste the second image as a new layer onto the new, larger first image. Move it into place over the blank working space you created next to the first image.

<br>5) Flatten/glue-down the new layer. You now have a single, wider image that contains both pieces. Save AS a new file (so that you don't destroy your orginial first file.

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This is a gross simplification. There are many intermmediate steps you might need/want to take in order to get the two images dimensions to match up, to have their color temperatures behave well together, etc, to have similar-enough contrast/sharpness/other in order to sit well next to each other. But you get the general idea.

Try ubc autostitch (free) or Panorama Factory (about $70 but there is a free 30 day trial period). I use Panorama Factory all the time with great success.

Thank you Matt, you couldn't explain it any better. I was able to stitch them together using Microsoft digital image suit, worked great! Thank you eveyone else for your usefull pointers.